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Blood Bowl – identification issues with the new minis

I got some Blood Bowl in last weekend, and it was my first game with the 2016 version of the game. I know the game back and forth, but man it’s been awhile and I had to look up a few rules. I forgot that dodging and picking up the ball are automagically +1 at all times and a couple little things here and there.

I used the humans and my homie had the orks. We used the total stock 11 player teams that come in the box. Suboptimal? oh yeah. Still a fun match up? yep.

My complaints about the Human and Ork scupts proved to be true in game. Even with the human team completely painted, it was nearly impossible to tell the Blitzers from the Lineman. I like the lineman sculpts a lot for the humans and the thrower/catcher minis are totally fine but it’s critical that the blitzers are easily identified via their model on the pitch — and with the new human team they are not. Also, they are very BORING blitzers.

The Gary Morley humans from 1993 and the later human team by an unknown GM sculptor (~2004) have the blitzers in a different stance than the lineman and that helps a ton to sort out which is which during play.

The 2016 orks are a bit easier to tell apart except the Black Ork blockers and the Lineman look almost exactly the same. Multiple times during the game I had to ask: is that a Black Orc? Again the 1993 version of the Ork team had very identifiable silhouettes for the Black Orc and Line orc miniatures– despite the fact that the lineman were not very good looking in that set. The 1993 orc blitzers were awesome looking. Unfortunately, the orcs in the new Blood Bowl are super-Sigmarized, that is, they look very much like their Age of Sigmar counterparts with their… ‘rock armor’ is definitely not Blood Bowl.

For the Humans, Forgeworld to the rescue with the two new blitzers in their ‘booster pack’ that actually look like blitzers! With 4 of these, I think the human minis/team is quite good looking and functional, harkening back in terms of design to Ally Morrison’s human art in the original Blood Bowl rather than SIGMARIZING the miniatures like they did with the orcs. These are great…

Aly Morrison – Harry the Hammer

All in all I think it’s a good set of blood bowl yet the newGW take on the miniatures is OK. Importantly, there are tons of alternate BB miniatures for nearly all the teams out there– nearly a cottage industry. These guys are where I got my Dark Elves from for the new version of the game.